Affiliations: :fedora_old:
Species: Meat popsicle
Pronouns: he/him
Job: Open Source Technologist @AWS
Old Job: @RedHat
O'Reilly Author | Opinions are my own | Hiding puzzles in plain sight
A little story from the "old days of open source": when I was a solutions architect for Red Hat, we visited a large telecommunications company, who wanted to consider moving their SMS infrastructure from UNIX to Linux, but they had a problem.
1/5
In their initial testing, they found Linux to be...too reliable. They didn't want customers to assume that every text message would go through, because they weren't willing to guarantee that, so they asked me if we would make them a custom kernel module.
2/5
What that module would do was simple: it would cause the kernel to randomly panic and halt. Not in a configurable way, just off a random seed, Russian Roulette style. They wouldn't know when it was going to happen, but it would eventually happen.
3/5
Needless to say, I was horrified. I knew that we could have written that, but ignoring the liability concerns, I knew that would be a support nightmare when all the people involved in "Project Footgun" were gone and someone in support was trying to figure out why these machines would randomly 💀
4/5
I may have jokingly suggested they just use the NVIDIA driver, but we declined to build this thing. I'm quite certain that they could have found someone else to make it for them, but I never heard if they did or not.
5/5
Am I the only one thinking of an open source project going from one for-profit corporation to a trade association that has exclusively corporate membership as only a marginal improvement?
Frustration of the day: recruiters who ask about job history when they have your resume already. There's a non-zero chance I'll have some light snark in my reply.
@funnelfiasco man, I really wouldn't do that. I get the unnecessary redundancy, but maybe think of it as a way to highlight specific roles and projects that might be especially noteworthy?
Hi @FOSSBackstage Karaoke friends, we've got a room at King Karaoke Berlin, it holds 15, so please let me know if you're coming. It's the Moscow room. We're here from 8-11 pm tonight. #fossback#fossbackstage
Hi @FOSSBackstage ! Thank you for letting me speak and be weird. You're lovely.
If you're in attendance at #fossbackstage#fossback and you'd like to go to karaoke tonight, please come find me at the official event after party. If we have enough willing people, I'll make a reservation.
I'm the blue haired tall white guy in the black AWS shirt and/or hoodie. Not too hard to spot. :ageblobcat:
Also, I still have tasks and if you do one, I'll give you an open source dumpster fire pin.
Why isn't someone making geek chic fashion for women? Style that says "i belong in this tech conversation" and "i look professional" and "i'm a geek". Stuff made with durable fabrics, AND POCKETS?
It's not fair, and it feels like an untapped market.
Setting up fedica (thanks Julia) and I realized that my profile picture on all of my social networks (except LinkedIn) are different pictures of Perry the platypus.
